"What we think of as 3D printing, says Joseph DeSimone, is really just 2D printing over and over ... slowly. Onstage at TED2015, he unveils a bold new technique — inspired, yes, by Terminator 2 — that's 25 to 100 times faster, and creates smooth, strong parts. Could it finally help to fulfill the tremendous promise of 3D printing?"

yeah i saw that ted talk elsewhere and randomly watched it over the weekend. fascinating! and to think we are really at the ground entry level of this emerging 3D printing technology. it seems like star trek tech.

Imagine not owning any physical clothes, but simply owning a machine that stores all the printing codes for your wardrobe, as well as several different types of polymers and a recycling system to melt used clothes back down. Buying clothes would become as simple as downloading the printing instructions and receiving the right polymers in the mail from Amazon Prime or whatever.

Such technology has the potential to antiquate the textile industry (thank god) as well as the laundry industry.

The next generation will pity us and our countless hours of sorting, washing, drying, bleaching, ironing, folding, dry-cleaning, stitching, patching... All of this will be as simple as dropping the clothes back into the machine, where the polymers will be melted back down, filtered, and reprinted as good as new.. literally.

Great video! 3D Printing technology has made a revolutionary change to the construction industry. According to this video , construction company in China has built 10 houses in a time frame of 24 hours using 3D printing technology.

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, stated that the UAE has emerged as one of the major incubators of innovation and future technology in the world today.

- His Highness stated: "We announce today the opening of the first 3D-printed office in the world, after less than a month of launching Dubai 3D printing strategy which showcases a modern model of construction. This is an experience we present to the world on implementing future technology in our lives, and it represents a new milestone for the UAE as a global leader in strategic achievements."

^ not exactly a fair article, its less about an innovation and more a criticism to complex manufactiring.

An assembly line uses thousands of parts because a car uses thousands of parts. And this prototype uses parts that are made conventionally and lacks the complex parts to make a car safe and powerful. So it's not really proof of concept at all. It's proof you can make a car body. But anyone could do that with their own home printer in ABS plastic. It would just take forever.

What does excite me is the possibility of car parts being made locally. Since printers are versatile, you don't need a lot of different machines to make something - and that's something worth noting.

On a Vader machine, a strand of aluminum is fed into a heat element that melts it at 750 degrees Celsius (1,382 degrees Fahrenheit). The liquefied metal is then passed to a ceramic tube that forms an ejection chamber and has a submillimeter orifice. A magnetic coil surrounds the tube and receives a short-lived electrical pulse to create a pressure within the tube that ejects a droplet of liquid metal through the orifice. The ejected drop is projected downward onto a heated platform that maneuvers to create solid 3-D shapes based on layer-by-layer deposition and the coalescence of the droplets.

Zack Vader said plans are to modify the device, adding nozzles to make it faster. Eventually the machines will be able to melt and print steel at 1,400 C (2,552 F).

World changing dense metal 3d printing with 100 times faster speed and 20 times lower cost

The 2018 Production system promises reliable metal printing up to 100 times faster, with 10 times cheaper initial costs and 20 times cheaper materials costs than existing laser technologies, using a much wider range of alloys.